Through an amazing series of events he was reunited with Tomi Reichenal, an Irish citizen who lives in Dublin and is also a Holocaust survivor from the same village in Slovakia.

Reichenal, 79, lectures on the Holocaust to Irish schoolchildren.

They both realized they were very likely on the same cattle car that toook them to a notorious concentration camp.

Kubicek's family was torn apart during WWII as his father failed to secure visas to New York for Peter, his mother and grandmother. His family was split further apart as they were deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in October 1944 and Peter was consequently moved between a further five camps before his liberation in May 1945.
It was one day in Prague, following his liberation, and suffering from tuberculosis, when his family were reunited by chance when he and his mother, who had also miraculously survived Bergen-Belsen, ran into each other on a busy street. Mother and son successfully communicated with his father and immigrated to America.
But even he is surprised by how quickly the Internet can connect two people.
It's thanks to the internet (and a freelancer reporter in Taiwan) that Peter is now in touch with Tomi Reichenal, a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor in Dublin.

Both men now believe they may have been in the same train car on their horrific journey to the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

The man who brought them together was reporter 65 year old Dan Bloom. Instrumental in connecting these two courageous men, Bloom says it is “a story to repair the world,” the kind he’s always looking for.
“I have known Peter [Kubicek] for about ten years as an email friend,” Bloom told IrishCentral. “We have emailed a few times a week for the past 5 years. He has written a memoir of this time in the camps and I have read it and been touched by it.”

Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp April 1945: Women and children herded together in one of the camp huts. Photo by Imperial War Museum/Public Domain

It was during one of their routine email interactions that Kubicek sent Bloom a New York Times article from March 14 – an article featuring Dublin-resident Tomi Reichental. Reichental is a 79-year old retired jeweler who has received much acclaim in Ireland for his talks at schools about his life in the camps.
The New York Times article focused on Reichental’s involvement in the documentary “Close to Evil,” which follows Reichental’s journey as he attempts to contact Hilde Michnia, a 93-year old woman who worked as a SS Nazi guard at Bergen-Belsen.
After reading the article, Kubicek noticed many similarities between Reichental’s youth and his own. “I, too, was born in Slovakia, in a town called Trenčin. I, too, was persecuted as a Jew, when in March, 1939, Slovakia became a quasi-independent Fascist state, firmly allied with Nazi Germany,” he told Bloom.
“I, too, escaped the deportations of Jews in 1942, most of them to their death in Auschwitz,” Kubicek added. “I, too, was finally deported in November, 1944, to Bergen-Belsen — in the first transport that was routed to Germany, rather than to camps in Poland.”

There was one quote of Reichental’s, in particular, that caught Kubicek’s eye. “People tell me I’m the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today.”
In an email to Bloom, Kubicek said, “While Tomi will soon be 80, I have already reached the venerable age of 85. I would only take exception to Tomi’s statement to the NYT reporter in Ireland that he is the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today. Tomi, you have not met me — though I wish we could meet.”
Struck by the parallels between these strangers’ lives and a desire to bring them together, on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, Bloom took the story to the San Diego Jewish World, a website where he is a regular contributor. “I loved the two comments (about being the fittest Holocaust survivor)... I had the idea to write a story for the SDJW which would set the stage for a possible reunion of the two men,” says Bloom.
Wishing to contact Reichental in Dublin, Bloom contacted the New York Times to no avail and struggled to see how he would bring the two men together.
But news of Bloom’s interest in the comparison between Reichental and Kubicek had already spread to Dublin – an email from Reichental himself landed in the inbox of San Diego Jewish World.To Bloom’s delight, Reichental was interested in contacting Kubicek. “I am writing to you as I would like to get the email address of Peter Kubicek...I go sometimes to New York, too, so it might be a possibility to meet Peter some day in person.”

A family portrait - Tomi Reichental on the bottom left. Photo from Tomi Reichental.

Bloom connected the two men, and since their initial contact earlier this week, Reichental and Kubicek have continued discussing the similarities of their experience via email.
The more they shared, the more similarities they realized. Kubicek told IrishCentral, “I was very surprised. We compared notes and I suspected that we we were on the same cattle car transport from the Slovak concentration camp of Serad to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944 which was the first transport that went there instead of Poland. He [Reichental] confirmed that that was the one.”
In his email to Kubicek, Reichental states, “It was the 2nd of November when we were deported from Sered and we arrived on the 9th to Bergen Belsen... it was the first transport from Slovakia with children, mothers and the elderly that didn’t go to Birkenau because the gas chambers were blown up by the Germans on the 7th of November due to the advancing Russians towards the camp.
“We were in the cattle cart traveling at the time and must have been diverted to Bergen-Belsen. We lived in block 207.”

A picture Tomi's father carried with him when he was with the Partisans (the resistance) that was all he had to remember them by. Tomi is the little boy, his mother Judith and his brother Miki. Picture from 1941-42. He was 6-7 years old. Photo from Tomi Reichental

Reichental shares Kubicek’s surprise at how quickly the two men were able to connect. “This modern technology – everything is happening very very fast.”
“It’s an amazing thing – the people who were in Bergen-Belsen – it’s an amazing feeling to meet somebody that has that connection. That’s what sort of connected us, there was nothing else, but when you meet someone who has also lived through horrific times. It makes us special and we have an affinity to each other because we were in the same place, which was a horrific experience.”
Reichental now gives talks and lectures on the Holocaust in schools throughout Ireland. He likes to keep a record of all the schools where he has given a talk and, to date, the total stands at 72,000 students.
“It is the last chance. We are the last witnesses to this horrific crime that happened not long ago, and to speak against those people who are trying to deny the Holocaust,” Reichental says. “I spoke directly to 72,000 students here in Ireland and I think they tell their parents and friends and my story reaches hundreds and thousands.
“It is important for me. I owe it to the victims. I lost 35 members of my family and it’s very important that we speak to young people – that they hear the story and tell their children that they met a Holocaust survivor.
“It’s not easy – reliving my past – I started to lecture 11 years ago. I didn’t speak about it for 55 years before this and when I first started it was hard.”
Reichental has been highly commended for his role and was last year awarded the International Person of the Year at the Irish People of the Year awards. He is now in such high demand that he is fully booked right up until the end of 2016.

Peter Kubicek has also spoken out about his memories culminating in the publication of his memoirs “Memories of Evil: A World War II Childhood” in 2012. Speaking of his writing, Kubicek feels that it is another experience shared with Reichental – “Tomi mentioned to me that for many years he didn’t talk about it and that is true of many of the rest of us too. They talk now of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that’s certainly what we were all suffering from. It took us all a long time to live with our memories, but I found that once I started writing it was like I was starting catharsis, like a boulder fell from my back and the process was almost therapeutic.”
Tomi Reichental doesn’t know where this new contact with Peter Kubicek will take him. Bloom talks of the pair meeting and Reichental admits that it may be a possibility. He tells IrishCentral, “Some time – nothing in planning right now but I have a couple of ties in New York and my son lives in the States but in California.”
“I visit him every year so it could happen, that if I really wanted to plan it, that I could meet him in New York...we will let each other know.”
Kubicek is eager for the meeting to happen if possible. “He [Reichental] tells me that he comes occasionally to New York and I would love to host him here. I work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I would love to take him for lunch there. My family would to love to meet him. He’s supposed to let me know.”
Of his own contribution to the story, Bloom says, “So many Holocaust stories are sad and tragic, as they need to be, of course, but with Peter and Tomi I want to celebrate humor and warmth and two good men, who led good lives and conquered the evil that once ruled Europe.”

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

BLOOMS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! ..........(you have everything gain by to celebrating with your famous last name and nothing to lose by exchanging names cards with all the other Blooms on Bloomsyday every year!)

PRESS RELEASE: June 16, 2015

DUBLIN - It's a happy coincidence when one stumbles across another
human being with the same last name, though such happenstance won't be
quite as so significant for the 10,000 people who might one day
descend on Dublin, Ireland, in the future, on some future June 16th -- Bloomsday
around the world -- and all bearing the surname Bloom.

The event, the dreamy brainchild of a semi-goofy semi-retired newspaperman in Taiwan named, get this, Dan Bloom, is aptly titled "Blooms Blooming on Bloomsday," and aims to srpead some good old-fashioned Bloomsday cheer around the world but especially in Dublin.

Actress Claire Bloom and actor Orlando Bloom will be invited to headline
the event at, say, the Dublin Joyce Centre, according to Bloom, a rather creative impresario and event producer who first fell in love with Dublin and James Joyce's ULYSSES when he was a wee bit lad of 16 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Expect a gaggle of Blooms from the
United States, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia who will will also be taking part following a
special tour of several Irish cities and villages, if Bloom's plan bears fruit.

All participants that year named Bloom will be
asked to bring a passport or driver's license as proof of their
identity -- maiden and hyphenated names are fine too, and negotiations are possible for Blooms who longer use the Bloom name but were once Blooms, Bloom says with a wink and a nod.

"This is all for fun," Bloom says. "A novel way to celebrate Bloomsday, if we can pull it off."

"This is certainly a unique event and we wish the Blooms the best of
luck in their attempt to set a record of the most Blooms at one time at a Bloomsday event in Dublin," the editor-in-chief of
Guinness World Records might say at the time the event happens.. Some of his officials will be attending the
event to validate it as a (not so small world) record breaker.

Bloom is looking for help in making this event happen on some future Bloomsday, and he's open to all ideas and opportunities, he says. And he's not kidding.

I look forward to further contact with Tomi Reichental. He tells me that he sometimes visits New York City. My family and I look forward to meeting him on that occasion and taking him for lunch in the Metropolitan Museum’s Trustees Dining Room.— Peter Kubicek,, New York.

Climate-change fiction, sometimes bbreviated as "cli-fi", is a literary and movie genre that describes novels and films about climate change and global warming issues.[1] Climate change themes are found within many genres and may be set in the past, present, or future. Some movies and novels raise awareness about the major threats that climate change and global warming present to life on Earth, although not all of them have that kind of impact and are released or published merely as entertainment.
A global community of novelists, journalists, bloggers, and activists have promoted this genre, including Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood,[2] American cli fi activist Dan Bloom,[3] British cli fi novelist Sarah Holding,[4] American novelist Barbara Kingsolver,[5] American sci fi novelist Kim Stanley Robinson,[6] American media critic Scott Thill,[7] American journalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow,[8] and Canadian-American archivist Mary Woodbury.[9] §

Contents

In the past, prior to current understandings of man-made global warming, authors such as JG Ballard, John Wyndham and Jules Verne delved into climate themes. In modern times, writers such as David Brin, John Atcheson and Liz Jensen have novels that could be deemed as working the climate-change fiction genre. When scientists began to develop current theories about anthropogenic global warming (AGW), modern climate-change fiction was born.[10] An early example would be Arthur Herzog's Heat.[11]

The cli-fi term is an abbreviation of "climate-change fiction." The abbreviated nickname has caught on worldwide with newspapers and websites featuring the term in headlines and articles, from the New York Times to the Guardian, but it is just a shortening of "climate-change fiction" and not a genre of its own.

"Cli-fi" is also a cultural term that signifies a way of seeing the world we live in now, where climate change and global warming are major issues of the day worldwide. As such, in addition to being an abbreviation for the climate-change fiction genre, it also serves as a kind of "cultural prism" -- a concept popularized by media critic Scott Thill in a November 2014 Huffington Post piece headlined "Cli Fi Is Real."

As the genre gains widespread exposure in the media, via newspaper stories and book reviews, more and more universities are offering literature classes featuring novels and films with climate change themes. From Columbia University to Temple University, the genre is reaching into the academy by leaps and bounds.[12]

On the Need to Detail "Cli-fi" terminology on YIKI

The "cli-fi" term

The cli-fi term is a shortening of the "climate-change fiction" term and has taken on a meaning of its own now, beyond genre. Outside its use sometimes as a nickname for climate-change fiction, it has become a buzzword that signifies a way of seeing the world we live in now, where climate change and global warming are major issues of the day worldwide. In a recent broadcast on climate issues on Minnesota Public Radio, for example, started off this way: Cli-Fi, meet reality. Call it the The Day After Tomorrow scenario. Scientists have been concerned that a freshening of seawater in the North Atlantic from increased meltwater in Greenland could cause changes to critical ocean circulation patterns that can change weather and climates. Now a new study in Nature Climate Change finds that changes in Atlantic Ocean currents are very likely already underway. The use of the cli-fi term this way -- "Cli-fi, meet reality" -- signifies how the buzzword has caught on outside the parameters of genre or academic studies. An upcoming four-part series from Reuters News Bureau in the UK, to be published the first week of April, will expain this more in depth, quoting a variety of sources working the cli-fi beat. There is no stopping the popular use of the cli-fi buzzword in popular media, no matter how much some serious scholars fight against this.

SEE ALSO"

The "sci-fi" term

Forrest J Ackerman used the term sci-fi (analogous to the then-trendy "hi-fi") at UCLA in 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp science fiction.[45][46][47] By the 1970s, critics within the field such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight were using sci-fi to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction,[48] and around 1978, Susan Wood and others introduced the pronunciation "skiffy." Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers."[49] David Langford's monthly fanzine Ansible includes a regular section "As Others See Us" which offers numerous examples of "sci-fi" being used in a pejorative sense by people outside the genre.[50]

So even at the science fiction genre article at Wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction -- which is a long article about the origins and history of science fiction, there is one segment titled The "Sci-Fi" Term which explains the nickname of science fiction this way, see above, thus showing that it is certainly appropriate for a Wikipedia article about the climate-change fiction genre to also offer readers and scholars an brief explanation about the cli-fi term, and the Wikipedia moderators have told me to post this this way in order to tell a certain someone that she cannot own this article or control everything on the page, as much as she would like to, since nobody owns this page, nobody.

So in muich the same way, this article could very well have a segment titled The Cli-fi Term and run it this way: Severaal people began using the term cli-fi (analogous to the popular nickname "sci-fi") in the first part of the 21st Century. As climate-change fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with movies and low-quality pulp climate-change fiction. By the mid-2010s, critics within the field were using cli-fi to distinguish the genre from sci-fi. As often happens when a new buzzword arises in popular culture, sometimes it will be used in a pejorative sense by people outside the genre, which is the case with cli-fi, too.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

After a Jewish newspaper in San Diego published a news article headlined "A Tale of Two Holocaust Survivors" on March 17, Tomi Reichental, who was one of the two men mentioned in the story and who is 80, contacted me by email from his home in Ireland and said he would like to get 85-year-old Peter Kubicek's email address and contact him in New York.

"

I read with interest your March 17 artic

le in the San Diego Jewish World

," Reichental wrote. "

I

am writing to you as I would like to get the email address

for

Peter Kubicek. My uncle Oskar Reichental was from Trencin

, where Peter was from

. My son lives in California

,

and I visit San Diego

sometimes

as I have some friends there. I go sometime

s

to New York, too, so it might be a possibility to meet Peter some day in person.

"

When Kubicek heard this news, he was overjoyed, he told me, and he wrote back immediately that very day to Tomi, noting:

"

I am very happy to receive your email address. I trust you read

'

Tale of Two Holocaust Survivors

'

that appeared in the San Diego Jewish World newspaper.

It occurs to me that we may have been on the same cattle-car transport to Bergen-Belsen, in November 1944, from the Slovak concentration

camp

of SERED. The latter was under the command of the notorious

Nazi,

Alois Brunner, whom I still remember.

"

"

Tomi, ešte vypráváš Slovensky

" Kubiceck asked, writing in Slovak, asking if Reichental speaks speaks Slovak. In a subsequent email, Reichental said indeed did still speak Slovak.

They two men might meet later this year, if things work out with their schedules.

"

Peter,

t

his modern technology is fantastic, all happens so fast

, Reichental replied to Peter's first letter, adding:

''

I am delighted to make the contact.

We might have been together in the same transport from Sered, after the selection by Alois Brunner

.

A

propos

,

Brunner

died in 2010 in Syria

and

he is no longer

being sought

after by the Wiesenthal

C

ent

er

as

they have proof that he died

. H

e would have been 102 year

s

old

now, if he was still alive

.

He got away with his crimes.

"

"Peter, it

was the 2nd of November when we were deported

from

Sered and we arrived on the 9th to Bergen Belsen

," Reichental said. "

As you said it was the first transpo

r

t from Slovakia with children, mothers and the elderly that didn’t go to Birkenau because the gas chambers where blown up by the Germans on the 7th of November

due

to the advancing Russians towards the camp. We were in the cattle cart traveling at the time and must have bean diverted to B

ergen Eelsen

. We lived in block 207.

"

"

My son lives in California

,

so I travel to

America

every year,

and

I have also friends in New Jersey

and

New York where I made a visit

a

couple of times so perhaps we might meet one day as per your quote in

San Diego Jewish World

article

,: Reichental ended his letter. "I am looking forward to that day, if we can arrange it."

After seeing the San Diego Jewish World article about him, Tomi Reichental reached out to the editors of that newspaper seeking to locate Peter Kubicek and wrote:

1.

Dear Sir,

I read with interest your March 17 article in the San Diego Jewish World. The documentary written about recently in the March 14 issue of the New York Times by the paper's Ireland stringer -- DOUGLAS DALBY -- about ''Close to Evil'' which was my second film which I made: it was not about my life but a story in which I was prepared to stretch my hand to an SS guard Hilde Lisiewitz (today H. Michnia) from Bergen Belsen living in Hamburg, she is 93 years old. When the film “Close to Evil” was screened in Lunenburg in Germany a German citizen was so enraged that he filled a complain with the Lunenburg prosecuting office and a file was open against her. She might stand trial for participating in a death march where several hundred women lost their life. Once the prosecutor opened a file it prompted the media and the story became a world news. That's one of the reason that NY Times published the article. My first film “Till The Tenth Generation” is my autobiography.

I am writing to you as I would like to get the e-mail address of Peter Kubicek. My uncle Oskar Reichental was from Trencin. My son lives in California and I visit San Diego as I have some friends there. I go sometime to New York, too, so it might be a possibility to meet Peter some day in person.

With my best wishes.

Tomi Reichental, [Dublin, Ireland]
==========================

To Which Peter Kubicek replied, after being forwared the letter from the SDJW editors:

2. Dear Tomi,

I am very happy to receive your e-mail address. I trust you read "Tale of Two Holocaust Survivors" that appeared in the San Diego Jewish World newspaper.

It occurs to me that we may have been on the same cattle-car transport to Bergen-Belsen, in November 1944, from the Slovak concentration of SERED. The latter was under the command of the notorious Alois Brunner, whom I still remember.

3 .
Dear Peter, This modern technology is fantastic, all happens so fast.

I am delighted to make the contact.

We might have been together in the same transport from Sered, after the selection by Alois Brunner, apropos he died in 2010 in Syria Damascus he is no longer south after by the Wiesenthal centre they have proof that he died, he would have been today 102 year old.

He got away with his crimes.

It was the 2nd of November when we were deported fro Sered and we arrived on the 9th to Bergen Belsen. As you said it was the first transpot from Slovakia with children, mothers and the elderly that didn’t go to Birkenau because the gas chambers where blown up by the Germans on the 7th of November do to the advancing Russians towards the camp. We were in the cattle cart traveling at the time and must have bean diverted to B.B. We lived in block 207.

For the past 10 years I have been involved with lecturing about the Holocaust in Ireland and around the world, work which has earned me a lot of honours and I am also traveling a lot.

I am enclosing a Tomi Reichental news story which was an article in one of the newspapers. [SEE BELOW NOTES]

This month I was in South Africa by invitation also giving lectures and speeches for a Charity fund raising for orphan children. We were in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. By the way I also gave lecture in New York 3 years ago at a local college there.

My son lives in California so I travel to the US every year, I have also friends in New Jersey, New York where I made a visit couple of times so perhaps we might meet one day as per your quote in that SDJW article by your friend Danny.

Tomi

======================================

NOTES:

''The Tomi Reichental story''

Tomi Reichental was born in in 1935 in Piestany Slovakia. In 1944 he was captured and deported to Bergen Belsen concentration camp with his mother, grandmother, brother, aunt and cousin. When he was liberated in April 1945 he discovered that 35 members of his extended family were murdered, Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins-died in the Holocaust.

Tomi was 9 years old in October 1944 when he was rounded up by the Gestapo in a shop in Bratislava. Along with 12 other members of his family he was taken to a detention camp Sered in Slovakia where the elusive Nazi War Criminal Alois Brunner had the power of life or death. Tomi, his mother Judith and his brother Miki, his grandmother Rosalia, aunt Margo and cousin Chava were dumped into a cattle wagon on a train bound for Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The others 7 members of the family were sent to the slave labour camp at Buchenwald, where inmates were literally worked to death, 6 of them perished in Buchenwald only one survived. It took 7 days and nights for the train to arrive at Bergen Belsen. In March 1945 his grandmother died in Bergen Belsen, young Tomi had to watch as the body of his 76 year old grandmother was dragged from their hut and thrown on top of a wheelbarrow already overloaded with corpses and then thrown on piles of corpses outside.

The sights and smells of death was everywhere. Tomi remembers:
“Besides, typhoid and diphtheria which were the biggest killers. People were dying of starvation and cold in their hundreds. First the bodies were removed and burned but later they were just piling up in front of our barracks, there were piles of decomposing bodies. The soldiers who liberated Belsen in April 1945 said they could smell the stench for 2 miles before they reached the camp. In the camp I could not play like a normal child, we didn’t laugh and we didn’t cry. If you stepped out of line, you could be beaten up even beaten to death. I saw it all with my own eyes”

For 60 years, Tomi didn’t speak of his experiences “not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t.” Since breaking his silence he has been on a mission of remembrance. Tomi has lived in Dublin from 1959. Since 2004 when Tomi began to speak about his experiences, he travels up and down the country twice a week to talk to Leaving Cert students. Hardly a week goes by without Tomi receiving letters from teachers and students with their reaction to his visceral eye witness account of the Holocaust. Tomi never wore any striped pyjamas. For 6 months he stood in the same clothes and watched as thousands perished wondering when his turn to die would come.

Thousands of pupils in schools all over Ireland have heard the Tomi Reichental story, and in January 2008 the general public had the chance to see and learn with the RTE transmission of the film “I Was a Boy in Belsen” 1 hr. Documentary film on Tomi’s life. The film was directed by the Emmy award winning producer Gerry Gregg, the film retraces the events that swept away the Jewish presence in Central Europe from the point of view of a boy who couldn’t understand why. Why had he to wear that yellow star? Why could he not go to the village school? Why did he have to get a new name and hide in a big strange city and pretend he was a Catholic?

Since Tomi began to speak in Schools, Colleges and Universities he is also regularly invited to present his lectures for private events. He spoke in Lenster house (Irish Parliament) in November 2009, to the European Parliament in Ireland, to the Naval Academy, military bases, and private associations like History, Women’s associations act.

In October 2009 then Minister of Integration John Curran TD approved a grant towards the development of “Teacher’s Guide” based on Tomi’s story to teach the Holocaust. This brochure which included the DVD “Till the Tenth Generation” ( full length film of 90 min ) which was distributed to 850 School in Ireland, hence the Holocaust is taught in part in Ireland according to Tomi Reichental’s story. His quest to inform as many people as possible about the Holocaust took him several times to the US, England, Slovakia and Germany to Bergen Belsen in June 2012 to present a lecture for the first time to German students.

In October 2011 Tomi’s first book was published “I Was a Boy in Belsen” He is now in process writing his second book. The latest project for Tomi was fulfilled with the premiere of his second film “Close to Evil” which had its premiere at the 25th Galway International film festival where the film earned the 2nd place in documentary feature, also directed by Gerry Gregg.

So, why has 79 year old Tomi Reichental, after 60 years of unbroken silence and 45 years of residential anonymity in a quiet cul-de-sac in Rathgar, embarked on his public mission of remembrance?

As one of only 2 Holocaust survivors left in Ireland, Tomi is mindful that the horrors of the Holocaust will soon pass from memory to history.

The words of Paddy Fitzgibbon at the unveiling of the only Holocaust memorial in Ireland at Listowel, Co. Kerry are imprinted on Tomi’s consciousness:

“Our generation, and the generation after us, will be the last that will be able to say that we stood and shook the hands of some of those who survived. Go home from this place and tell your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren that today in Listowel, you looked into eyes that witnessed the most cataclysmic events ever unleashed by mankind upon mankind. Tell them that you met people who will still be remembered and still talked about and still wept over 10.000 years from now – because if they are not, there will be no hope for us at all. The Holocaust happened and it can happen again, and every one of us, if only for our own sense of self preservation, has a solemn duty to ensure that nothing like it ever occurs again.”

Tomi puts it very simply: “In the last couple of years I realised that, as one of the last witnesses, I must speak out, I owned it to the victims that their memory is not forgotten”

Having taken the courageous leap from the safety of silence to the emotional exposure of public remembrance, Tomi took the last big step on his painful journey through the dark days and months of his childhood incarceration. In October 2007 Tomi Reichental was among a group of survivors invited to attend the opening of a museum on the site of the Bergen Belsen camp. There with his brother Miki and cousin Chava who also survived, after 62 years these survivors stood for the first time at the giant mound which holds the bones of their grandmother along with thousands of others lost to history.

Tomi’s story is a story of the past. It is also a story for our times. The Holocaust reminds us of the dangers of racism and intolerance, providing lessons from the past that are relevant today. In Tomi’s words. “The Holocaust didn’t start with cattle wagons and gas chambers, but with whispers, taunts, daubing and then abuse and murder. One of the lessons we must learn is to respect difference and reject all forms of racism and discrimination.”

At 79 years of age, Tomi Reichental never refuses an invitation to speak to pupils, no matter how far away or how small a class. His tireless quest earned him a recognition that he never expected.
On the 16 of November 2012 the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Joachim Gauck awarded Tomi Reichental the “Order of Merit” for his untiring commitment to furthering mutual understanding, reconciliation and German-Irish friendship.

The awarding of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is a prestigious recognition and particular highest honour that the Federal Republic of Germany bestows for services to the nation.

Addition to the story:

On the 17th of October Tomi have received “The Global Achievement Award” The award was presented to me on behalf of the Irish Diplomatic core and the VoxPro Co. it was presented to me by Simon Coveney minister of Agriculture, Food and Defence and the directors of VoxPro Co. The ceremony was in Silver Spring Hotel in Cork, attended by 42 Ambassadors and honorary Consuls including 200 guests.

Person of the Year Award

On the 6th of December 2014 Tomi was Awarded the “International Person of the Year”. The reception was held in City West hotel and was broadcast by RTE 1 in a live 2hr TV program. The Award is very special for me, because he was honoured by the Irish people for his untiring work for promoting tolerance, reconciliation and rejection of racism and bigotry.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

One of the best days of the year for finding coins on the sidewalks of New York, according to Roger Pasquier, is March 18, right after St. Patrick’s Day, which usually falls on March 17. In general, the best time is early morning, and the best weather is chilly: cold enough so that people have to wear gloves, but not so cold that they stay inside. Sundays are good; Mondays are bad. The west side of a southbound street is good because that’s where buses stop and people fumble with wallets as they get on. Snow is an impediment, at least until it melts. Then it can be helpful.

Pasquier, who is 67 [and who matriculated at Tufts University in the 1960s and transferred after his sophomore year to Columbia,] is an ornithologist, who retired from the National Audubon Society in 2012. He spends every day of birding season in Central Park. But he is also an élite money hunter. He started out casually picking up coins, bills, and dropped MetroCards. “But then I said, Be scientific, keep track of this.” From 1987, when he began recording his findings, through 2014, he retrieved a thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars and eighty-seven cents. From 1987 to 2006, he averaged about fifty-eight dollars a year. Then Apple introduced the iPhone, and millions of potential competitors started to stare at their screens rather than at the sidewalks. Since 2007, Pasquier has averaged just over $95 a year.

One Monday morning, Pasquier, who is compact and wiry and was that way even in his days at Tufts on the heady 1960s, headed south from his apartment, on East Sixty-eighth Street, and explained the hazards of his craft. Good spirits, he said, are a liability. When you’re happy, you tend to look up, not down. “It takes a lot of will power to focus when you’re in a cheerful mood,” he said. On Second Avenue, between Sixty-second and Sixty-third, he dashed into the street, reached down, and grabbed a quarter.

Which brought him to the second hazard of his hobby: oncoming cars. The best place to find coins is in the gutter of the street, where few people walk and there aren’t as many distractions, such as bottle caps or the circular stains of ground-in chewing gum. Pasquier tends to avoid eye contact with other pedestrians: “It’s important that I keep my eyes on where the money is.”

He maneuvered through crowds like a speed skater. His strategy comes from his main passion. Birds rely on a “search image,” he explained.“They have a general sense of what their food or predator looks like and they become very attuned to those shapes.” A chickadee knows to dart the moment it senses the shadow of a hawk. Pasquier can find a coin by its shine or its shape, or by the sound it makes when dropped. Asked if he believes that picking up a penny brings you good luck, he said, “The penny is the luck.”

At 55th Street and Second Avenue, Pasquier noticed a glint in the street and stepped out to retrieve a penny. It hadn’t been a bad day so far—26 cents in thirteen blocks.

His greatest find, he said, occurred in 1995, in Grand Central Terminal. He spied the faint outline of a tightly folded bill; from a distance, he couldn’t tell if it was a one or a twenty. He approached discreetly. Then, he said, “like a heron spearing a fish, I jabbed out my arm.” Outside, he unfolded the bill and saw the face of Benjamin Franklin. First, he felt excited, then he got worried: perhaps the money belonged to a child heading out on his first trip alone? A friend made him feel better by suggesting that the bill had been dropped by a drug dealer.

South of Thirty-fourth Street, he cut over to Third Avenue, noting the number of bars there. (Alcohol is the ally of a coin hunter.) Then came a string of pennies, one of which had been run over so many times that the back looked like a dime. Another was bent like a taco. Money was hard to come by in SoHo. Near the entrance to the Staten Island Ferry, Pasquier stopped to tally his earnings: thirty-two cents. Then he looked down at his right foot. Behind it, shining in the sun, was a bright copper penny. “It just shows how easy it is to miss things,” he said, reaching down. ♦

Monday, March 16, 2015

Peter Kubicek is an email friend of mine who I have known for about ten years now. He lives in New York and I live in Taiwan but we meet often online to chat about current events and Jewish history, especially the Holocaust.

Kubicek is a Holocaust survivor, 85 years old now, and the author of a memoir he wrote about his experiences as a teenage boy in six slave labor camps in Gemany.

​The other day he shot me an early morning email about a recent New York Times article about a Holocaust survivor in Ireland, Tomi Reichental. The article was written by a Times stringer in Ireland and told a story most readers in North America probably had never heard of before. (It's worth Googling after you read this column.)

At the end of the Times article, Reichental said he was in very good health -- leading a happy and productive life in his sunset years -- and told the reporter: "People tell me I’m the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today.”

Reichental is 80 years old, a retired jeweler in Dublin, and he often gives talk at schools in Ireland about his life in the camps long ago. Recently, a European documentary was made about this life, titled "Close to Evil," and that is mostly what the Times article was about.

​"​

Here's

​a

story about a survivor from Slovakia, appearing on page 8 of the main section of the Sunday New York Times of March 15

​," Kubicek

​told me in his email message.​

​"

His story strangely parallels my own, though I am more than five years older than he. I just looked up his memoir on Amazon

​, 'I Was A Boy From Belsen,'​

​ ​

and

​there are really some interesting

similarities between our stories.

I asked Peter to tell me more. He did.

"Tomi Reichental's story strangely parallels my own," he wrote. "I, too, was born in Slovakia, in a town called Trenčin. I, too, was persecuted as a Jew, when in March, 1939, Slovakia became a quasi-independent Fascist state, firmly allied with Nazi Germany.

"I, too, escaped the deportations of Jews in 1942, most of them to their death in Auschwitz," Peter added. "I, too, was finally deported in November, 1944, to Bergen-Belsen -- in the first transport that was routed to Germany, rather than to camps in Poland."

"For me, five further concentration camps in Germany followed, while my mother and grandmother remained in Bergen-Belsen," Peter told me. "My grandmother died there, while my mother survived. My mother and I met after the end of the War on a street in Prague."

Peter had a few more things to tell me, and good email friend that I am, I was listening.

"I also wrote a memoir about my experiences, titled "Memories of Evil -- Recalling a World War II Childhood." I find what I know of Tomi Reichental's book very compelling. While he now lives in Ireland, I live in the U.S., and have given a few speeches about my experiences," he wrote. "But while Tomi will soon be 80, I have already reached the venerable age of 85. I would only take exception to Tomi's statement to the Times reporter in Ireland that he is the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today. Tomi, you have not met me -- though I wish we could meet.​"

Thursday, March 5, 2015

UPDATE:We now hear that NYT Mag story editor LUKE MITCHELL had this brilliant idea and conducted the commissioning and the approval of his boss Jake Silverstein. So bravo, the brilliant assignment editor LUKE MITCHELL. Who knew? That's GREAT ASSIGNMENT EDITING, sir!

UPDATE 2: A NYT staffer informs this blog that the fee for the K piece was NOT $1 million as some pundits had put forward as a ballpark figure. His one word tweet to this blog when asked if the fee was 1 mil was "no". So what was the FEE? $25,000?

PRELUDE - BUT SCROLL DOWN FOR FULL BACKSTORY: We asked a few people in the book business their POV on all this. Let's call them: ''Lars, Mars and Bars.'' This is what they told us. Or maybe we made this all up. You decide. All in fun. This blog loves K, so it's all in fun and good cheer.

LARS: Dear My New York Times blog, I gotta tell you that I am Norwegian by birth and just read all of Part 1 of "My Saga" in a copy of the magazine. To be honest, I am sort of conflicted. It sure was a gamble o the part of the NYT, to assign this kind of piece to K. Who was the editor who picked up the phone and handed the gig to K on a silver platter? I dunno. But whoever he or she is, they deserve some kind of PR prize for savvy editing.. Did it pay off? I'm not sure. I couldn't tell if it was a genius at work, or a jet-lagged hack typing. Parts were brilliant, others were yuck and much of it seemed pointless. Did you read that WC toilet scene? What was K thinking? What was K drinking? What was K smoking?

MARS:K's quasi-stream of consciousness thing: it's been done many time before, and better, no? Think James Joyce from Ireland and "Ulysses". And what was with all the obsessive-compulsiveness with minutiae? The writer Nicholson Baker is much funnier in "The Mezzanine," about some bloke buying shoe-laces on a lunch break, no?

BARS:Not that anyone asked me in my Brooklyn neighborhood, but from my POV, the K saga was ''soitainly'' was a bold move by the Magazine. Great way to relaunch the mag. How much the pay? Whatever they paid, it was worth it. The Magazine will never be the same. The K coverage was priceless and don't forget to factor in the social media added value PR bonus. It was a win win for both parties. Punch has deep pockets. The Times never loses.

LARS: My verdict: undecided. I'll wait until part 2, online on March 15. In the print edition. I am print guy, Mr. Paper. I hate screens. I hate screening. But I do want to see part 2

MARS: You guys can say what you want to here. But one thing: I'm have no intention of reading K's loooooooong multi-voluminous six book thing, whatever they call it: novel, monologue, fiction. Life is too short. Then again, maybe I am missing something?

BARS: IMHO, K is a hack prose writer but I like his pose. He is not a genius. Just verbose. The mag piece was fun for me as an installment. But I too have no intention to.read his six pack volumes. Life is too short.

MARS: I am curious. How much budget money did the mag editor have to set up this deal? Airfare hotels and payment? 10k dollars? As a pr giimmick it worked for the nyt brand to bring in readers for mag eyeballs. But did it pay off? From a pr strategy pov I gotta salute the editor. But was it wise idea in the long term? K will.probably publish the two mag pieces as a new book, too. Watch!

BARS: Maybe the total mag budget pr package and writing fee was $100,000 dollars? Did the Gamble pay off as a branding effort? What will Punch say? Off with da editor's head?

LARS: I'm sure the Times marketing and PR departments paid a lot and are satisfied with themselves for doing so. Great gimmick for the first issue of the relaunch. That's the NYT for you! Smart savvy people.

MARS: Yes. Launch PR. It worked. Punch's pockets deep. Could it have been as high as 100,000 dollars? As tax write off?of doing business? K does not need the money so why did he accept the gig? Whatever, it was a pr triumph!A literary triumph? Umpf. People talking about it. I love the drama of it all.BARS: It's a close call.

LARS: What are you talking about?

MARS: Look, no heads are gonna roll. The top Times people loved the way it worked out. All PR is good PR. The TIMES likes the buzz - good and bad.

LARS: Has any
outside media like the ny observer or keith kelly or lloyd grove written about the pr coup of the k deal? Anyone see anything yet in the MSM or on social media? Links, please. Drinks, please!

Here.... is a media story worth following, if following media stories is your thing. If not, skip this page as fast as you can. It's about America's favorite Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard and his recent foray into the Sunday magazine at the Times, set up by a savvy editor for the MAGAZINE's relaunch. JAKE SILVERSTEIN, working in tandem with Story Editor Luke Mictchell, and yes Jake, the Mag's newish chief editor with a wonderful Texas swagger, and who orchestrated the entire deal --lock, stock and barrel (and toilet bowl) -- did a very savvy Texas swagger PR thing, with an apparently unlimited budget, and it went down like this (see below), and this is how K himself tells the story to readers of the NYT:

Apparently, Jake Silverstein, the very PR savvy and Wesleyan-trained storyteller and "I won't take NO for an answer"top editor at the Magazine, OR alt theory is that it was brilliant story editor Luke Mitchell who thought up the cockamamie idea and brought it to Jake, contacted K by telephone/email/twitter last December 2014, really just a few months ago, and laid out a cool ''big budget'' ''take no prisoners'' gig for K, if he was interested.

Fly to Canada, drive down to the USA, travel across the USA and write about his
trip exclusively as a PR coup for the NYT Sunday Magazine.

The payment offered? Well, nobody is saying but let's say that since this PR gig was for the ReLaunch of the flagship Sunday magazine, there were unlimited funds available from Punch's deep pockets. Do they still call him Punch? Some say the offer was $1 million dollars. Other say more like $500,000. Others say it was a paltry $75,000, plus airfaire. You figure it out. It was NOT peanuts!

Whatever, it could have been as high as $100,000 for the ten day gig, plus airfare and hotels and food, all taken care of. And all K had to do was write about the trip for the TIMES. Some say the fee was A MILLION DOLLARS, all greenbacks, but who knows?

Others say it was a $75,000 fee for a two part series that would run exclusively in the Magazine, a week or two apart. The first part already ran, and PART TWO is set to appear in print on March 15. The Ides of March? But let K tell it himself in his own words. Here he explains to NYT readers how the two part series came to be:

''When [Luke Mitchell, the story editor at the mag or Jake Silverstein the top editor, I cannot remember which one it was, they all sound alike, at] The New York Times Magazine contacted me in December to ask whether I would travel across the United States and write about my trip for them, at first I didn’t think of my missing license.'' [Luke Mitchell the brilliant Mag story ideaor maybe it was the savvy and oh so generous with the money Jake] [who contacted me via my agent and publisher in NYC] proposed that I travel to Newfoundland and visit the placewhere the Vikings had settled, then rent a car and drive south, intothe U.S. and westward to Minnesota, where a large majority ofNorwegian-American immigrants had settled, and then write about it, at first I didn’t think of my missing license. ''“Atongue-in-cheek Tocqueville,” as [LUKE / JAKE] put it. [THE SAVVY AND VERY GENEROUS WITH A PAYCHECK EDITOR IN QUESTION] also suggested that Ishould see the disputed Kensington Runestone while I was in Minnesota.It was on display in a little town called Alexandria, near where afarmer had claimed to discover it in 1898, and it could be proof — ifauthentic — that the Vikings had not only settled Newfoundland butmade it all the way to the center of the continent. It probably was ahoax, he said, but seeing it would be a nice way to round out thestory.''
'

''I accepted the offer at once. I had just read and written about theIcelandic sagas, and the chance to see the actual place where two ofthem were partly set, in the area they called Vinland, was impossibleto turn down.''

''A few weeks later, I was on a plane flying from London to Toronto. Iwas running a temperature, and after battling my way through all thelines and security checks at Heathrow that morning with an achingbody, I wished I could keep flying. I just wanted to sit and watchmovies and doze, far from everything. Now and then I would pause themovie and switch to the map to see where we were. We flew overIceland, then toward Greenland and then over the North Americancontinent. It was more or less the same route the Vikings sailed athousand years ago.''==========================BACK TO THE BLOG STORY: So K flew to the USA, did the trip as planned and wrote the piece for the Times. Maybe 50,000 words, maybe 500,000 words, who knows how many words but it was long piece and the editors split into two pieces and most likely the piece will soon be published also as a stand-alone BOOK under K's name, a new entry in the K sweeptakes in English speaking countries. It will be a good book, too and [dwight] garner great reviews, too.

If you read part 1, you either liked it, loved it or hated it. And now part 2 is coming soon. Next week in fact.

We asked a few people in the book business their POV on all this. Let's call them: ''Lars, Mars and Bars.'' This is what they told us. Or maybe we made this all up. You decide. All in fun. This blog loves K, so it's all in fun and good cheer.

LARS: Dear My New York Times blog, I gotta tell you that I am Norwegian by birth and just read all of Part 1 of "My Saga" in a copy of the magazine. To be honest, I am sort of conflicted. It sure was a gamble o the part of the NYT, to assign this kind of piece to K. Who was the editor who picked up the phone and handed the gig to K on a silver platter? I dunno. But whoever he or she is, they deserve some kind of PR prize for savvy editing.. Did it pay off? I'm not sure. I couldn't tell if it was a genius at work, or a jet-lagged hack typing. Parts were brilliant, others were yuck and much of it seemed pointless. Did you read that WC toilet scene? What was K thinking? What was K drinking? What was K smoking?

MARS:K's quasi-stream of consciousness thing: it's been done many time before, and better, no? Think James Joyce from Ireland and "Ulysses". And what was with all the obsessive-compulsiveness with minutiae? The writer Nicholson Baker is much funnier in "The Mezzanine," about some bloke buying shoe-laces on a lunch break, no?

BARS:Not that anyone asked me in my Brooklyn neighborhood, but from my POV, the K saga was ''soitainly'' was a bold move by the Magazine. Great way to relaunch the mag. How much the pay? Whatever they paid, it was worth it. The Magazine will never be the same. The K coverage was priceless and don't forget to factor in the social media added value PR bonus. It was a win win for both parties. Punch has deep pockets. The Times never loses.

LARS: My verdict: undecided. I'll wait until part 2, online on March 15. In the print edition. I am print guy, Mr. Paper. I hate screens. I hate screening. But I do want to see part 2

MARS: You guys can say what you want to here. But one thing: I'm have no intention of reading K's loooooooong multi-voluminous six book thing, whatever they call it: novel, monologue, fiction. Life is too short. Then again, maybe I am missing something?

BARS: IMHO, K is a hack prose writer but I like his pose. He is not a genius. Just verbose. The mag piece was fun for me as an installment. But I too have no intention to.read his six pack volumes. Life is too short.

MARS: I am curious. How much budget money did the mag editor have to set up this deal? Airfare hotels and payment? 10k dollars? As a pr giimmick it worked for the nyt brand to bring in readers for mag eyeballs. But did it pay off? From a pr strategy pov I gotta salute the editor. But was it wise idea in the long term? K will.probably publish the two mag pieces as a new book, too. Watch!

BARS: Maybe the total mag budget pr package and writing fee was $100,000 dollars? Did the Gamble pay off as a branding effort? What will Punch say? Off with da editor's head?

LARS: I'm sure the Times marketing and PR departments paid a lot and are satisfied with themselves for doing so. Great gimmick for the first issue of the relaunch. That's the NYT for you! Smart savvy people.

MARS: Yes. Launch PR. It worked. Punch's pockets deep. Could it have been as high as 100,000 dollars? As tax write off?of doing business? K does not need the money so why did he accept the gig? Whatever, it was a pr triumph!A literary triumph? Umpf. People talking about it. I love the drama of it all.

BARS: It's a close call.

LARS: What are you talking about?

MARS: Look, no heads are gonna roll. The top Times people loved the way it worked out. All PR is good PR. The TIMES likes the buzz - good and bad.

LARS: Has any
outside media like the ny observer or keith kelly or lloyd grove written about the pr coup of the k deal? Anyone see anything yet in the MSM or on social media? Links, please. Drinks, please!

6 天前 - How does Karl Ove Knausgaard's new New York Time Magazine series ... by the Times to write a travelogue: “The editor proposed that I travel to ... piece was meant to run in the previous issue, for the magazine's relaunch).